Moving the Museum in a creative rethinking for a transport/mobility museum in Cape Town
through absences, presences and possibilities in current museum exhibitions

N. Jade Gibson

1. INTRODUCTION: BETWEEN ‘HERE’ AND ‘THERE’ – RETHINKING THE MUSEUM CONTEXT

Museums are, in many ways, artworks, albeit often collectively constructed, but arguably works of art nonetheless– an imaginary concept, a speculative idea created from nothing, shaped into a concrete reality through the action of the material re-assembling or re-representation of the world through a series of installations in a particular environment. Consequently, ‘Art and the museum are mutually constitutive… As an art practice, the museum is marked by concreteness, materiality and performance. It is a making that is a doing. This making is no less speculative for being so concrete’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004:2 – also see Preziosi 1996)

Museums, however, also present ourselves to ourselves, they present notions of culture and community, whether scientifically or humanities orientated, from simultaneously the inside and the outside - in which we are both identifiers with the artefacts and displays, as in those that evoke memory and familiarity - and also define ourselves as ‘other’, through notions of ‘difference’ in relation to what is deemed ‘exotic’ or unfamiliar, distanced by a historical past in which we try to locate our own histories, or comparing ourselves with places geographically sited elsewhere. The glass cabinet in museums both distances and frames, providing a barrier, but also acting as a lens to look at artefacts, in that it ‘…fetishizes objects by conferring an instant aura of preciousness. It places them in a space and time distinct from that which visitors occupy’ (Henning 2006:8). Even the removal of the glass case in museums ‘may bridge the gulf between audience and things in one sense, but it does not necessarily mean a more intimate, comfortable and straightforward relationship between audience and displayed object. In fact, things can seem simultaneously alive and distant…’ (Henning 2006:6). 
The result is, as Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1991) writes, ‘…an act of excision, of detachment, an art of the excerpt. Where does the object begin and where does it end? … Shall we exhibit the cup with the saucer, the tea, the cream and sugar, the spoon, the napkin and placemat, the table and chair, the rug? Where do we stop? Where do we make the cut? … Perhaps we should speak not of the ethnographic object, but of the ethnographic fragment’ (1991: 388). As Strathern (1990) enunciates, cultural artefacts in a museum thus become separated from their original meanings to become marginalized in ‘ever decreasing circles’ (39) to become situated within the domains of a refined form of ‘aesthetics’ to the point that, ‘Then what are museologists but conservers of images? The exploration of internal design, the attention to artefact qua artefact, the relating of one style to others, the preservation of exemplars, suggests a self-referential universe’ (ibid.39). Culture then, in museum contexts, as Preziosi (1996) suggests, becomes a moebius strip within itself, seemingly two-sided but in actuality one-sided; culture being split between dichotomous sides and at the same time one and the same.

The museum, and exhibition, also shape the context of interpretation of these ‘ethnographic fragments’, not only through explicit means but also through those less explicit, through ‘rhetorics of value’, as argued by Kratz (forthcoming 2010/11) - processes of circulation, recontextualisation, exhibition production and interpretation, combining a poetics and politics through methods such as museum design, architecture, lighting, labels and other texts, to shape visitor interpretation. Moreover, the interpretative framework of the museum itself, in which objects are sited within the museum’s categorization as a ‘type, also influences the ways in which objects are interpreted and understood.

Creating a new museum therefore offers an incredible opportunity - it draws on possibilities for a new artistry and rethinking concepts; a challenge to even rework tropes of museum-ness, to turn either the museums’ gaze in on itself - as in recent South African’s Iziko Museum’s discussion concerning efforts to re-engage with its collection of artefacts, largely gathered during, and hence defined by, colonial and apartheid approaches to collection and preservation, in what is now deemed to be a ‘social history collection’, in which Rassool and Witz raised the possibility of the museum interrogating itself and its colonial modes of collection – or to actively attempt to use the ‘poetics and politics’ of its display to push the boundaries of the embodied experience of the visitor towards new perceptions and understandings, an example being the conjunction of architectural and exhibition design in the recently constructed Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, which randomly assigns black and white entry cards, thus forcing visitors to take separate entrances and routes into the museum, thus directly and bodily experiencing the impact of segregation (Rankin and Schmidt 2009) . 
South Africa arguably exists as a lived present space of past memory, in which past practices of racialised hierachisation and segregation for many remain habituated through practices of social, economic and geographical divides, the ‘spatial imprint of apartheid’ (Watson 1998) in which ‘the everyday socio-spatial legacies of apartheid continue to be reproduced’ (Robins 2002: 666) in a country where cultural and social capital in the past was tied up with one’s physiognomy and the colour of one’s skin. Extrapolating this argument, it can also thus be argued that objects presented in South African museums may also implicitly and sometimes explicitly through representations in display, modes of collection and silences, embody and present differences that not only defined persons, but established the identities they lived within and presented themselves through.

In a Cape Town that even today remains segregated and divided spatially and where an increase in ‘City Improvement Districts’ (Miraftab 2007) continue to accentuate the growing divides between rich and poor (Robins 2002) where, on the whole, living areas are still divided into separate ‘communities’ which, although reifying ‘community’, often play out the divisions of the past, exactly how apartheid intended them to do . This is coupled with the fact South Africa’s Gini coefficient is now claimed to be neck and above Brazil to be the highest in the world (Pressly, 2009), which hardly undoes economic divisions of the past created along racial lines.

Is there a space, therefore, for a new museum to challenge and rework embodied practices, habitus and divisions in the present, not only to, as the Apartheid Museum does, place the visitor in an ‘embodied past’ in order to understand the past, but to rework the embodied present – to challenge, to create debates, to engage visitors (both local and further afield) with issues in the present through a perceived interconnection with the past? Furthermore, is there an opportunity for thematic museums that in the past have had a focus on technology and science at their forefront, or antiquity, nostalgia and the fetishised collected object - in which, ‘As a result, what one has is what one shows. Very often, what is shown is the collection itself, whether highlights, masterpieces, or a collection in its entirety. The tendency increases for such objects to be presented as art’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1991:388) - to be rethought thematically to create an entirely new approach in the present, with the understanding that, ‘Museums operate in a hyper-complex world. Clearly a complex approach articulates a need to explain the meaning of objects beyond disciplinary boundaries that seek closure to a role as actors in the constitution of social relations by examining broader categories such as art, landscape, memory, technology, exchange and consumption (Cameron and Mengler 2009: 213), and thus ‘to rethink object interfaces on the basis of a range of multiple, mobile metaphors – material, solid and linguistic to which various actors can contribute as a kind of transdisciplinary practice. Here, boundaries between disciplines are able to be transcended and knowledges assembled and integrated.’ (ibid: 214).

The above suggests it is possible to take a museum focus or ‘type’ seen as technological or nostalgic, containing what might be seen as a Eurocentric narrative of progress and technology, of machine and manufacture, of object enthusiasts, and turn it into something that becomes a lens through which to view and rethink ones environment and place in the world, to actively engage visitors in rethinking their roles and lives in the present?

2. IN MOTION – DEVELOPMENTS TOWARDS A TRANSPORT MUSEUM IN CAPE TOWN

An opportunity to create such a museum has arisen in the new thinking happening recently towards proposals for the possibility of a transport/mobility museum for the city of Cape Town. This has arisen from several angles – Hoskins Consolidated Interests (HCI) Foundation, which is the charitable branch of HCI, has been collecting donated artefacts since 2005/6 such as memorabilia, photographs, albums and books, uniforms and oral histories from pensioners of Golden Arrow Bus Services (GABS, acquired in 2004) which is the main public transport bus service for Cape Town. HCI Foundation have consequently established a ‘Cape Town Public Transport Museum’ website online with the claim that it ‘seeks to encourage the participation of all role players in the public transport system’ - with a small collection of these and other Golden Arrow artefacts made available for viewing at HCI Headquarters in central Cape Town . Furthermore, the Cape Town station space, which was revamped for the World Cup 2010, also officially included plans for a site, albeit relatively small as such, assigned to be a transport museum which is still undergoing process at the time of writing, and is at a very early developmental stage. There are also steam train enthusiasts who have apparently petitioned for an abandoned steam train in Cape Town to be made into a tourist attraction. 

A research team at the University of the Western Cape humanities department was arranged in 2010 towards assisting HCI Foundation research and to expand the possibilities and concept of a museum of transport . During this time, a GABS archive was uncovered, mostly dating from the 1980s, at Golden Arrow Epping Depot, and was made available to UWC researchers from mid-2010. Discussion suggested possibilities of a museum exploring a broader concept of ‘mobility’ beyond transport as a theme, even extending to a Cape Town ‘City’ Museum, but with a maintained focus on the GABS collection as a starting point for research. These approaches examine the history of ‘transport’ as reflecting not just vehicles themselves, as a more conventional transport museum would do, but as reflective and instigative of South African culture itself.

3. NEW MOVEMENTS IN TRANSPORT MUSEUM THEORY – APPLIED TO CAPE TOWN

Transport museum practitioner and theorist Professor Colin Divall from York University , has argued for a re-examination of transport theory in museums that re-inserts it back into the realm of the socio-political, understanding its hierarchies, accessibility and networks in relation to power and status relationships of the past, in which, ‘the challenge for historians is to find ways to ‘write’ or display the history of transport, travel and mobility through objects in ways that encourage visitors to reflect critically on the past, and what it means for them’ (2003:263). Lubar (2004), in his description of the replacement of a 40 year old transportation exhibition with a new one at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, also argues that stories of people and networks are a key theme in relation to transport exhibitions. Divall (ibid.) also agues that ‘…museum learning is as much about feeling, emotions and desire – the affective dimension – as it is about formal categorization and analysis (ibid: 262 – also see Divall and Scott 2001; Divall 2008; 1999; Stratton 1990 and Lubar 2004)

Nowhere could an argument like this be more apt than in the case of South African transport. As part of its racially hierarchised formation, which includes not only the official apartheid years in South Africa (1948-1994) but also pre-apartheid years, issues of transport segregation were present from the start (see Pirie 2009; 2008; 1992; 1989; Sey 2008; Horrell et al 1946-present; Khosa 1991). Moreover, the racialised and hierarchised segregation and divisive structuring of South African society went hand in hand with the development of transport. Train lines were set up not only to transport goods but also to transport manual labour, particularly to the notorious migrant labour workers’ compounds attached to factories, municipal works, and mines, where they lived in cramped barracks, many bunks to a room, and returned home only once a years. Airplanes were even used as an enticement to fly migrant labourers from more distant places in the active campaign at the time to recruit ‘badly needed’ new workers – a campaign that also involved recruiters actively going out on ‘train’ campaigns. Local labor was also used to construct railway lines and roads. Even the first cars to cross Africa relied heavily on human labour, that of local villagers – to push or pull stuck vehicles across sand-dunes and other difficult terrain (Pirie 2008) for the white elite vehicle owners. Driving motor vehicles was also segregated in the past, in which access to particular occupations such as driving jobs were divided according to race. The taxi industry became established particularly through forced removals requiring travel for distances beyond feeder limits of bus services. The construction of roads and railways were even used in urban design as ‘buffer zones’ to separate white/coloured/black residential areas (see Sey 2008; Morris 1969; Watson 1998), as well as access to train tickets being a means of monitoring the travel of black South Africans across the country, in that special permission was required, for example, to come to Cape Town to work (Horrell et al, 1946-present). The architecture and urban design of the city of in the 1960s and 1970s established highways as part of the argument for forced removals of residents under the Group Areas Act (1950) and in the bid to create a new city architecture that favoured white privilege (see Morris 1969; Bank and Minkley 1999). The impact of longer and more expensive travel distances to work, along with racial segregation on transport, led to bus and train boycotts throughout Cape Town’s transport history (Pirie 2009; 2008; 1992; 1989; Sey 2008; Horrell et al 1946-present).

Transport and mobility in Cape Town consequently has a highly problematic history, when viewed outside the ‘artefact qua artefact; and self-referential aesthetic design of transport vehicles - in many cases arguable as not representing mobility but as ‘immobility’; blockages, restrictions, barriers and boundaries that extended not only in relation to physical mobility but also economically, socially, and, even today, and continue to have impact (Pirie 2009).

With this knowledge and insight, one can approach the idea of a transport museum with some trepidation, some excitement and some anticipation of possibilities that may or may not be depicted, and the additional challenge of how ones goes about this. The notion of a ‘new’ museum of transport and/or mobility in Cape Town could, in effect, be based on older, previous models of transport museums, or could open up entirely new creative possibilities of representation - an interrogation of the past and present which combines artefacts, a ‘poetics and politics’ of embodied, experiential modes of representation – which present a model for a representation of mobility and transport within innovative museum display, enabling visitors to question, take part and de-stabilise seemingly stable relationships and understandings of mobility and social interaction in Cape Town towards more pluralistic conceptions with its feet (not heels!), firmly rooted in South African historical soil, but which places its head in the present, hopefully not presenting a linear narrative of progress but a more holistic, embodied perspective.

New pluralistic themes and modes of display also provide possibilities of a conception of the city through the museum, as, returning to Preziosi’s metaphor, a mobius strip for representing, while simultaneously interrogating and ‘undoing’ the construction of networks, accessibilities and mobilities of the past,. The museum itself can become a vehicle for more cohesion, less division and a means to link the spatialised (and still implicitly racialised) body back into the city, not in a separate ‘no-go’ zone or a highly protected ‘security complex’ or ‘City Development District’ of relative spatial isolation. 
Coupled with these concepts is that fact that the city itself has been reconceptualised and theoretically reworked -and a spate of studies have emerged which challenge the idea of static urban development approaches and favour a more humanistic, imaginative, perceptual and emotive approach, in which creativity and imagination play a greater role in a city’s conceptualization, an approach which extends towards Anderson’s (1983) ‘imagined community’ in relation to the immaterial as well as material constructs and representations of the city (Pile 2005; Cinar and Bender 2007; Bridge and Watson 2004; Appadurai 1991 – for work on Cape Town see Field 2007; Taylor 1996; Biron 2009).

Pile (2005) for example suggests that the city is not just urban infrastructure, but is imbued with other meanings – myths, fantasies, desires, narratives, imaginaries, ‘phantasmagorias’ – the more metaphorical, emotional, desires, fantasies and haunting sides of the city in which ‘what is real about cities is the sheer expressiveness and passion of its life’ (1-2; author’s emphasis). Pile's work moves on to explore vampire and ghost stories in the city; but perhaps one can use this as a metaphor for transport? What are the ‘ghosts’ of the past that haunt the present; the memories and associations made with the present, through the presence of transport vehicles and infrastructure? What are the ‘hidden’ problematic aspects of transport, the more negative areas that, arguably, suck the life(-blood) out of the concept of a motile, mobile city of Cape Town – even places of death - like road accidents, lack of public safety due to walking from transport stops, a practically non-existent public transport system at night, issues such as the recorded spread of HIV through lorry routes (Karim and Karim 2002), taxi shootings and taxi-bus violence (leading to many deaths) in the past (Khosa 1991), bus strikes and riots (Pirie 1989) and continued xenophobic attacks (one of the most recently reported being a Zimbabwean man surviving being physically thrown off a train shortly after the end of the World Cup), what about the history of importation of slaves into Cape Town on ships? What does one ‘do’ with these problematic and difficult part of transport, soaked in blood, suffering and violence in relation to the narrative of progress and development in the contemporary city of Cape Town, in relation to a more ‘social’ representation of a history of transport?

Furthermore, cities are now also interpreted in terms of transnationalism and globality, through immigration/migration, historically- and presently- constructed diasporas – a movement from within and without, where boundaries and experiences cross and new hybrid cultures may form where one is simultaneously both ‘here’ and ‘there’ in different places (Appadurai 1995; Vertovec 2001; Ash 2002a; 2002b; Bhabha 1990; Said 1978). Cape Town airport was rebuilt for the 2010 World Cup along with central bus stations and the city centre train station, and Cape Town is a popular tourist venue. Furthermore, Cape Town as a port provides a long maritime history, a place where many people arrived, not only slaves from Africa, India, Madagascar and elsewhere, but also indentured labourers and migrants from all over the world – thus contributing to the diverse population of Cape Town.

There are also other themes pertinent to transport and mobility; walking, cycling, hiking, and other modes of transport in the city. Bissell (2009) has explored how passengers experience transport and the concept of the journey; others the sense of city-ness conveyed while walking (Pile 2005) as well as studies of ‘automobility’ and ‘autoscapes’ (Beckmann 2001). One could even extend these themes to concepts of the internet – globally, through the internet, one can exist ‘everywhere’ – and the movement of material culture as well as media across space and time through commerce, importation and acquisition (on which there is extensive literature on pretty much all subjects).

4. JOURNEYS - RESEARCHING TRANSPORT/MOBILITY MUSEUMS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Bearing in mind all these thoughts and considerations listed above (and more) in relation to possibilities for a future museum of transport/mobility, there was a need, first, to explore and survey what possibilities and ideas lay in current South African representations of transport and mobility in museums. Should, for example, transport museums already in existence outside Cape Town be taken as a primary model, or was there room for a different take, an alternative reading, and ultimately, form of museum representation? When we consider that, as Leslie Witz claims (in his more recent research), that there are over 40 new museums alone in the New South Africa, there clearly some need for selection.

It was decided to survey some standard, more conventionally defined ‘museums of transport’ or with ‘transport collections’ and other museums not conventionally defined as ‘transport museum’ but having components pertaining to broader conceptions of transport and mobility – these museums being related to issues of forced removals, migrant labour, slavery, histories of the more problematic restrictions and negative aspects of transport.

The museums finally settled on were as follow; around Cape Town - the District Six Museum, the Slave Lodge, Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, the South African Air Force Museum, and the Maritime Museum; in Johannesburg - the James Hall Museum of Transport, the Apartheid Museum, Workers’ Museum and Museum Africa; in George - Outeniqua Transport Museum; and in Mossel Bay - The Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex. Curators and museum managers were interviewed concerning the content of the collections, the relevance of the museum and its exhibits to transport and mobility issues under consideration, and other relevant aspects of the museum, such as its history, audience, education programmes and so on. Photographs were also taken at each venue. There were other possible museums that were not visited , due to budget and time restrictions - as well as the sheer number of museums and exhibits to choose from which could be argued to relate broadly to mobility/transport. These could be followed up on at a later date. However, a selective overview was sufficient, as the intention was to get a sense of the breadth of what types of exhibits and possibilities were available to draw upon - not to survey all possible museums and exhibitions. I also include reference to my own knowledge and research of the UWC/Robben Island fine art and photography collection at the Mayibuye Centre, and my visit to the Ghoema and Glitter exhibition at the Castle, Cape Town (curated by Fiona Clayton who is also manager of the Slave Lodge). Likewise, I bear in mind the HCI Foundation bus artefacts and photographs collection (including the archive at Golden Arrow Epping Depot), and refer to interviews undertaken in a video recording of a group interview mid-2010 with HCI Foundation Golden Arrow bus pensioners, instigated by UWC MA student and film-maker Charlene Houston.

One objective of mine was to look at and examine possibilities for exhibiting transport and determine questions concerning what might or might not be included in a new museum and its exhibitions, to ‘get a feel’ for what was available, in order to rethink and explore what would be relevant towards building ideas, and to offer different perspectives and concepts for representation.. 
Another intention was to extend the notion of the ‘phantasmagoric’ and hidden side of transport and mobility – to explore not only what was present, but also the ‘not-seen’ - the ‘felt’ – as in the emotive aspects - of museum representation. Such an approach bears in mind the suggestion of invisible networks of connection between static objects and the mobile, fluid past, in relation to the structuring of movement and mobility in the shaping of South African society, in which objects themselves are not necessarily understood as static, but as ‘moments of presentation’, for, if, as Hall (1990) claims, identities are fluid rather than static, moments of presentation within ongoing practices, then collectively formed identities in relation to the movement of persons also have their moments of presentation - through which artefacts, seemingly solidifying and making factual the past, may elide other facts and possibilities - and through which the collective identity of society seemingly exists through their moments of presentation that operate as definers within ongoing fluxes, shifts and change.

A third area I wished to explore was also to consider the museum in relation to Cape Town as a whole, regarding the possibility for a creative reworking and reconceptualisation of the city through a Transport/Mobility Museum.

A fourth was to examine to what extent material representations in museum contexts, suggested a broader understanding in relation to transport within conventional transport museums in South Africa, as well as what ideas and possibilities the less conventionally-orientated museums offered within the broader spectrum of mobility studies – exploring the absences, the silences and misdirections through history and the present that could occur through the presence of artefacts and their display within museum contexts – how could these create boundaries and divides that could implicitly exclude audiences through the histories and narratives they appeared to refer to?

5. WITHIN MOTION – THE ‘ROAD TRIP’ OF TRANSPORT/MOBILITY MUSEUMS IN SOUTH AFRICA - POSSIBILITIES, PRESENCES AND ABSENCES

a. The James Hall Museum of Transport – Re-considering the fetish and rethinking nostalgia

The James Hall Museum of Transport in Johannesburg is the ‘fetishist for vehicles’ enthusiasts’ paradise, in which the static vehicle becomes the true ‘artefact qua artefact’ sited within a self-referential realm of ‘ethnographic fragments’, divorced from their actual use. The museum, consists of five main halls – containing fire engines; buses, trams and trolley buses; locomotives; a ‘mixed hall’; and cars and bicycles. Each hall, along the theme assigned to it, is jam-packed with vehicles, not just one of each kind, but many of each kind. A quick list from the James Hall brochure includes, for example, animal-drawn vehicles, steam vehicles, tractors… a pont… an anchor, diesel buses, bicycles, motorcycles, wheelchairs, fire-fighting equipment, motor cars (vintage and post-war), steam locomotives, municipal vehicles, agricultural equipment, farm machines, and South African trams, buses, trolley buses and electric trams. 
Peter Hall is the museum manager/Head of Institution and the son of Jimmy Hall, an avid transport collector and early nature conservationist (apparently cycads) who founded the James Hall Museum of transport in 1964 in conjunction with the City of Johannesburg.

Certainly, the authenticity, nostalgia and uniqueness of the displayed vehicles is awe-inspiring, and through these factors creates a sense of value - one is materially, visually and physically catapulted into seeming myriad time periods of vehicle-ness and occasional associated small artefacts that, in their own sense, convey a sense of history based on a lost ‘nostalgia’ through looking at the vehicles alone, as well as a sense of technological development over time, with some explanation of mechanical advancement (Peter Hall is also a qualified mechanical engineer). One display, for example, describes ‘how to drive a model T ford’.

The halls are divided according to type of vehicle rather than an overall chronological history, although Peter Hall says the vehicles, which are restored to mechanical working condition but not ‘as new’ are regularly taken out and moved around – some for educational purposes, others for rallies. The museum collection is diverse and to some extent eclectic in that it includes the vehicle collection of Jimmy Hall, as well as further donations and acquisitions over time. There is an active ‘Friends of the Museum’, who carry out activities such as the restoration of ‘The Lawley’ Steam and take cars out on rallies.

The vehicles are on the whole accompanied by brief labels providing a short description. When there are more detailed labels, they generally refer to the collector history and technology of the vehicle. The uniqueness of the various vehicles is evidenced in the main entrance hall which displays one of the few bright orange Outspan promotional converted minis in the shape of an orange. The museum also has ‘special’ vehicles – such as an electric car from around the 70s and a vehicle designed to run (successfully!) on manure.

With regard to contextualizing or relating vehicles to people and the social networks of transport history (as suggested by Lubar 2004 and Divall 2008) other types of representations are limited. Attempts at depicting more than just the vehicles in the museum include life-size models of some oxen drawing a cart and life-size models of horses drinking from a water trough outside. The museum does have some reference to people in that it contains small numbers of photographs of cars being used in the past with their drivers posing next to them. There is also a visual ‘timeline’ in the museum that runs from 1950s, to around 2000-ish. This timeline is an attempt to place the transport vehicles within a broader historical context. It contains, for example, images such as coca cola, Elvis and Barbie dolls in the 50s, 60s and 70s, arguably locating transport history within a primarily historically Eurocentric perspective rather than one aimed specifically South African cultural artefacts. 

The hall of buses is extensive. It includes early vehicles, such as trolley buses; Johannesburg’s last tram and various bus models over time. However, there are no detailed written explanations with these buses as to their use, or the routes they took, other than an indication of the cities they came from. Also present in the museum are three dimensional scenes of buses in miniature created by model-makers, as well as miniature models of many other types of vehicle.

Taking the bus hall as an example, given the discussion and perspective already presented regarding representing the broader social history of transport, its networks and people, what can there be said to be missing from these displays and labeling, and what might this entail? For example, one of the buses is a green Cape Town bus. Putting the social fabric back in, what is not there? One could argue that clearly, the bus is not moving, there is also no street, or the physical environment the vehicle existed and moved within. Also, there are no depictions or evidence of people, the bus is presented as an empty shell, an object in its own right, and the buses have become ‘ethnographic fragments’ to the extent that they have even lost their ethnography - they have become like artworks, images qua images (as in Strathern 1990) detached from society and interpreted within a visual, technological aesthetics of their own. 

Yet these vehicles do have their phantasms and ghostly memories, they are haunted… if one looks closer, and digs deeper into social memory, moves into new interpretations….

Searching the museum for representations of people actually using vehicles, other than photographs of car owners, I did find one person – a stuffed a stuffed, pale, life-sized (and somewhat disheveled) dummy of a woman with parasol seated on what appeared to be a car passenger seat in a long white dress and who appeared to be either somewhat sedated - or even, possibly inebriated (or in a dead faint). My own suspicion and maybe fantasy was that she might have been present as passenger at a rally, as there was no description in any label accompanying the vehicle she was seated within, that served as an explanation. However, even her presence, and the type of person she depicts, immediately raises questions and provides a particular perception, particularly of the ownership and access to motor car vehicles in South Africa’s past. She clearly represents an elite and affluent ‘white’ South African lifestyle and this raises the question - which people drove cars?

Even looking at recent statistics in South Africa, the car driving population is primarily, and shockingly, given that the white population is less than ten percent of the overall population, in which, for example, 70 percent of car drivers in 2005 were ‘white’. As mentioned before the driving of motor vehicles previously was strictly controlled according to race. More sinister aspects arise; the absence of depictions, or explanations of, racially restrictive past imply an exclusion of an entire racialised history, extending in terms of access and economy into the ownership of vehicles in the present. However, the presence of the dummy of the wealthy woman traveler conversely implies discrepancies, a reminder of the exclusion and racialised social hierarchies of the past. What implications would this have for the majority of the South African population, with regard to relative distribution of car ownership today?

Returning to the physical presence of the bus, what then emerges if we put people back into the scene? What if we return the presence of people waiting for the bus in the street, the presence of the driver in uniform and cap seated at the front of the bus in the driver’s seat, the conductor waiting at the entrance of the bus with his ticket machine that snakes tickets into the hands of boarding passengers? If one becomes one of those passengers, and steps into the bus and goes inside, what then does one see?

Immediately upon entering the bus, and only visible if one makes the effort of to peer inside the bus, there is a sign stating where ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ can sit on the bus. This immediately positions the viewer within a different context of interpretation, moving from the bus as an inert material, technological and even aesthetic object, to its divisive role in the social history of segregations, hierarchies and exclusion of South Africa, further suggesting other issues in transport at the time - the disputes, the controversies, the boycotts, the modes through which segregation that informed identities and social relations, and how people moved around, were observed in Cape Town city (see Pirie 1989 for extensive research on these matters). Put the route back in and then one needs to ask which ‘group area’ or areas the bus served, and it then referents the disputes of the past over who could and did travel where in relation to constructs of race and identity – its presence provides an embodied material reality to understanding the divisions of networks of transport in the past.

However, there is no obviously visible material presence of labeling or indication of such divisions in the bus hall other than this single notice present in the bus, which in itself was only visible if you looked into the entrance of this particular bus amongst the many other buses, trolley buses, and other such vehicles present in the hall.

As a contrast, there is a sculpture of the burnt out shell of a bus, by Peter Meintjes displayed in the Mayibuye Centre (UWC/Robben Island art collection) which suggests a different take, that refers to riots and boycotts, the bus as a sign of resistance, the destroyed bus as a sign of defiance. This bus draws on a different framework of aesthetics, interestingly created as an artwork, in itself, it is also aesthetically beautiful, and, in a sense, being created in the apartheid past, arguably now nostalgic. However, it clearly refers to a transport history that is more socially problematic. If representations like this from artworks or photographs either in the Mayibuye Centre which also has banners depicting buses and other images showing a ‘deeper’ transport history, could be contrasted directly with the buses in James Hall museum, a whole new and more pluralistic take on the bus and transport history may be evident. Through contrasting two ethnographic ‘fragments’ from different contexts, and drawing attention to particular artefacts such as the signs on buses, the juxtaposition would in itself, through the conceptual gap required to put these together, suggest a richer, deeper historical and diverse perspective on bus transport.

Returning to the James Hall Museum, there is also an education officer who takes groups of schoolchildren around the museum (through whom at least verbally, if not visually, it is possible some of this history might be explored) - individuals are free to wander around on their own trajectories - and while I was at the museum, a group of schoolchildren were being shown around. One fascinating and special feature of the James Hall museum was that they had a fire engine that was driven out to the front for the schoolchildren to climb onto, that then drove up and down and sounded its siren. Clearly, the interactive feature of being able to climb onto vehicles is a big drawing factor, and such experiences are not to be ignored (The museum is also apparently now planning the building of a tram track to move around the museum ground). The museum also has an active outreach programme with buses that are taken out into the public, including a ‘museum bus’ containing exhibitions which was taken to schools being converted into a ‘vuvuzela exhibition bus’ for world cup exhibition purposes at the time, as well as a specially created football bus in the shape of a football being pushed by a dung beetle, as well as an older ‘Christmas bus’ (interestingly there were not buses for other religious celebrations, another indication of the audience the bus was originally designed for?) that was being used again at Christmas, complete with a live Santa Claus. Bearing in mind the ever-present World Cup throughout the research period, a soccer display was in the main entrance hall alongside the Outspan mini.
Peter Hall, the museum manager, was also involved in producing a book, ‘The People Shall Move: A peoples history of transport’ with the City of Johannesburg (Sey 2008), which does explore the social history of transport, apartheid and resistance, as part of the promotional argument for Rea Raya, the BRT (Bus Rapid Transport System) planned for Johannesburg in parallel with development plans for the 2010 World Cup. Although the museum did not have any of the corresponding exhibition on display at the time of visiting, there were rolled up banners in the museum that Peter Hall stated were taken out to schools to be exhibited.

b. Moving Experiences: The District Six Museum

Now I move to a very different museum space, as a deliberate contrast to the James Hall Museum. This is the District Six museum, an entirely different space of representation to James Hall, described as a community ‘Museum of Conscience’ which formed initially as a response to the displacement of around 60,000 persons from the District Six residential area as a result of forced removals (see Parenzee 2000; Bennett, Julius and Soudein 2008; Rassool 2006a, 2006b).

There are no major ‘authentic’ artefacts in the District Six Museum - no streets remain, there are no vehicles, no houses, no physical community living side by side – bar a set of street signs collected from the original streets, small household artefacts brought in by ex District Six residents and their families, and creative artistic reconstructions and installations along with a myriad of exhibits, photographs, artworks, craftworks, and the opportunity to meet original residents of District Six who act as voluntary guides.

District Six Museum has been argued as a place of memory (Rassool 2006a, 2006b) and memorialisation, a space where the pain of apartheid, and its haunting presence in the present is engaged with through a mode of exhibition that puts people first, at the core of the museum’s interest.

District Six’s Museum’s relevance to issues of social mobility and transport can be interpreted in several ways. It acts not just as a reminder of the impact of the Group Areas Act (1950); arguably a state of ‘immobility’ rather than mobility, or ‘forced mobility’ but also operates in relation to other aspects of social memory, such as within HCI Foundation bus driver/inspector narratives. For example, in the HCIF pensioner interviews, one pensioner spoke of working in the District Six trams that ran to the docks, the influx of dock workers in and out of District Six on the trams, was well as scenes of groups of drunken visiting sailors standing in front of trams and preventing them moving forwards. Thus transport and mobility, although not thematically depicted in the museum itself, is part of the hub and floor of the previous District Six society, which consisted of people moving to and from work, people arriving from the docks, and people moving through streets, and a sense of movement implied evocatively and metaphorically through the street name signs placed on the stairs one walks upon in the museum; suggesting movement, yet the haunted reality of the actual streets’ non-existence.

Furthermore, District Six is known for its large floor map; probably its most famous exhibit, depicting the streets people moved through and the places where they lived; old relationships spatially represented through ex-residents writing their names on the homes where they lived, being revived and commemorated, through an active material engagement in the present. What contrasts with James Hall is this active engagement of people with the museum – as a space of community and connection, reconnecting relationships divided through removal to various ‘townships’ under the Group Areas Act in Cape Town, and people, rather than being invisible or stuffed dummies in places like James Hall Museum of Transport, are made visible through photographs, their creations, writing and their presence in commemorative events, community education programmes, and discourse.

c. In Flight: The South African Air Force Museum

As a further contrast, and in relation to transport, is the South African Air Force Museum, a small museum at the Ysterplaat South African Air Force base which incorporates collections donated from Air Force Veterans and separate hangars containing as selection of air transport vehicles.

The museum is run by Chris Teale who apparently studied, amongst other short courses, museum installation and design at Michaelis Art School at the University of Cape Town. He sees much of his exhibition work as along the lines of artistic installation – incorporating collages (for example he has his own secret jokes hidden within, such as Hitler, a non-smoker, being surrounded by Mussolini smoking a cigar, and other smokers), assemblages and more esoteric 3-dimensional installation pieces.

The objects brought in by veterans (items were also being delivered during interview, in several suitcases) is somewhat reminiscent of the collection of artefacts by HCI Foundation Golden Arrow pensioners; photograph collections, badges, uniforms, writings, small items of memorabilia. There are cabinets depicting themes such as women in the Air Force (women pilots played an important role in training new pilots in the past), exhibitions commemorating the work of individuals and their awards and bravado in the SAA. The most recent exhibition was on the Korean War.

Being an in-house museum, the SAA museum does of course take a very uncritical look at the history of the South African Air Force (apparently an art student is in the process of creating an installation on the SAA Angolan war experience - he is going to create a beer hall, says Chris Teale as the SAA just got drunk, they felt so bad about everything). It is focused primarily on commemorating the people who constituted the workforce, including cleaners, assistants, drivers and the like. Veterans also act as voluntary guides for visitors.

One exhibit, for example, is an installation piece created by Chris Teale that consists of a blacked out large glass cabinet, with a peephole. The cabinet has a sign at the front - to the memory of ‘all black, coloured and Indian soldiers who served their country in two world wars’ – and the installation inside contains poppies for every soldier who died. Also inside was what these SAA servicemen were given when they retired from service - 5 pounds, a citizen’s suit in khaki, and a bicycle (note – another form of transport-related information). Teale’s conceptual approach is that, through having to peer into the cabinet, what was perhaps invisible information becomes noted; he thus draws attention to this aspect of SAA history. 

d. Museum Africa – Stasis and Change

Museum Africa in Johannesburg is undergoing reassessment of its collection under the new director Ali Hlongwane. There are a few items and exhibitions of note for this discussion. 

One exhibit in the geology exhibition section has a construction that allows children to stand on a replica of the moon’s surface with their head through the hole in a figure in a moon suit - a little like old-fashioned seaside holiday pictures - to have their picture taken as if going to the moon. Although maybe stretching (both metaphorically and physically) the point a little here, perhaps a museum of transport and mobility could include issues like trips to the moon and space travel? (Not so seemingly ridiculous, given that South African multimillionaire entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth recently went to the moon). The exhibit is apparently very popular with children, and these interactive factors can be borne in mind when creating a museum of transport and mobility, also serving to locate the museum visit in memory, through the memento of a photograph. 

Museum Africa also has an exhibition on Gandhi’s visit to South Africa, where he is known for having had dispute in 1893 on a train concerning segregation and was thrown off in Pietermaritzburg. The museum also contains the famous Bensusan museum of photography, an excellent resource for early photographs concerning transport in South Africa. One of the photographs blown up to a large size in the main Museum Africa Hall shows the square in front of where the museum now exists, filled with ox carts. 

e. Trains, Migrancy, and Labour – Lwandle and Workers’ Museum, and Outeniqua Transport Museum

Migrant Labour museums also relate to issues of South African mobility and transport. Migrant labour needed the use of an intensive network of trains to transport people across South Africa, as well as goods produced by factories and mines. As stated previously, these labourers lived in cramped conditions, many beds to one room, and returned home only once a year, for approximately several weeks to a month to their families. Such migration and movement had inevitable repercussions on family relations and relationships, both within residential compounds and in rural areas. They are also reminders of the strong family and land links maintained by many South Africans living in urban areas; an example of how persons are simultaneously located both in one place and another, even in the same country. 
Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, just outside central Cape Town on the N2 near Somerset West, is sited in the old community hall of Lwandle township, a residential area that grew up around the workers compounds attached to the local factories. Despite the exhibition in the main hall consisting of mostly flat text and image-based panels and a few artefacts that bear reference to issues of transport and mobility, what helps brings the exhibition alive is the fact that a live person, who lives in the township and thus is related to the history of the development of Lwandle, tells the story, making the narration ‘come alive’. 

In relation to aspects of mobility and transport, the museum includes aerial shots of Lwandle from 1953 onwards, showing the growth of dwellings and street networks around compounds attached to local factories over time. It also displays narratives of travel and arrival at Lwandle. There is a pile of suitcases ( which seem to often turn up in migrant labour exhibitions), and David Goldblatt's permanent exhibition of photographs of long journeys on buses taken to and from work, as well as an art installation with wheelbarrows. There is also a recently opened exhibition (2010) depicting the work of clothes designers in Lwandle, arguably as alternative narratives to stories of loss and victimization, to being one of contribution, innovation and talent that individuals bring into the area - a sense of movement not just of persons, but of material culture and artistic production into the area . 

The ‘star attraction’ of Lwandle, however, is ‘Hostel 33’ the original place where workers used to stay when working at nearby allocated factories (Noleen Murray is the architect/postdoctoral fellow assigned to this project). The hostel is undergoing restoration, in an effort to restore it to its original condition, each room, with four beds apiece (which extended to one bed per family), being shown in different years. A decision was also made by the museum to keep up the sign of complaint when squatters who had occupied the previously empty Hostel 33 were asked to move out, arguably showing that controversies of property and ownership run into the present in Lwandle. Opposite Hostel 33 are converted hostels that families now live in.

The Worker’s Museum in the centre of Johannesburg, as opposed to being sited in a township, also was a place of residence for migrant labourers. The museum exhibition operated differently in that the City of Johannesburg assigned an outside design team - the outcome being a more ‘glitzy’ exhibition providing a history of migrant labour through the use of video, sound, installations and photographs. 
The emphasis again is on people’s experience. For example one of the rooms depicts a rural backdrop with photographs of migrant labourers in the foreground, suggesting both the urban and rural origins of these persons. The living quarters are not as they originally were, but are painted a bright red, with less emphasis on the ‘authenticity’ of the past, and more on design aspects - certainly not a sense of being ‘lived in’ as in Hostel 33 of Lwandle Migrant Labour museum.

The curator Anne-Kristin Bicher pointed out that the museum does not specifically concentrate much on the actual journeys to and from the workers’ compound through public transport networks such as the railways. However, there are references throughout the museum displays that refer to aspects of transport and mobility of this kind. For example one of the video displays portraying memories of people arriving in the worker’s compound, has one narrative filmed on a train. Furthermore, one large photograph portrays people apparently having just arrived from the train station in Johannesburg, carrying their luggage across the street.

Of contrast to the James Hall timeline is the Workers’ Museum timeline, not being one of coca cola and Barbie dolls but one which focuses specifically on a South African historical resistance and apartheid context. The museum also has artefacts people brought and made, and apparently the compound was a site of creativity for performances and music in the past. Also of interest, particularly in relation to recent issues of xenophobic violence in 2008 and since, is a map depicting where migrant labourers came from, including other African countries.

Outeniqua Transport Museum in George consisted mostly of steam locomotives and rail-related road vehicles (see current paper by Leslie Witz for a more in-depth discussion). The museum previously ran a steam train from Knysna, known as the ‘Tjoe-Tjoe’ but flood damage destroyed the route and the line now runs from Mossel Bay, a fact that has sorely depleted the number of visitors to the museum. Filled with steam locomotives and road vehicles, the museum seemingly reeks of colonial interests and history.

Interestingly, what is not present are signs indicating segregation on trains and simulated waiting areas – the segregation of apartheid remains completely invisible in the museum space, a decision the manager, state is due to complaints that they were racist, and not relevant in the New South Africa. Their removal also suggests, however, an erasure of history, based on forgetting, rather than drawing attention to injustices of the past. The presence of a Royal Train and President Kruger train hark back to colonial and apartheid days. These trains, as in the vehicles of James Hall museum (and possibly even more so) appear to stand alone; figures of aesthetic contemplation of a bygone age rather than one of a critical interrogation of social frameworks and hierarchies. One attempt to recreate the interior of a train with 3-dimensional life size figures depicts the (white) passengers portrayed in a nearby photograph, but does not recreate the (black) waiters in the same photograph – again raising questions around choices and the creation of presences and absences in museum depictions. Again, there are models (model enthusiasts, as a subject for display, would offer a very interesting theme for future exhibition). There are also artworks (apparently transport art makes great collectors’ pieces) depicting trains rolling through countryside, bellowing wreaths of smoke, as well as a mechanized miniature model train circuit which is activated by a coin.

A post 1994 poetry exhibition on posters along a walkway, does depict a more critical take on the apartheid years, although these are presented with little accompanying description. A side partitioned section of the exhibition floor focuses on transport workers in the past and includes images of workers building railways, carrying rails in long lines above their heads, always with (white) supervisors. In one photograph, they are pushing their supervisors along train lines on a small rail cart, presumably for the amusement of those having their photographs taken, but a photograph which, from another context, poignantly delineates lines and relationships of servitude, control and exploitation, even more so metaphorically and in reality suggested by the train tracks the workers built with their own hands and are now, in addition, expected to supply the physical power to push their supervisors along.

What was perhaps most striking about the museum as a whole was the lack of integration of worker’s information with the actual trains, and the absence of a truly critical take on issues such as migrant labour, train segregation and resistance over the years, or the possibility for an exploration of continued transport problems in the present. Also, what was lacking was an active community – such as that of District Six – where were the present train workers, and their families? Where were the people and/or goods (and their merchants) who traveled and travel?

f. Of Sailing Ships – The Dias Museum Complex, Maritime Museum and Slave Lodge.

The Dias Museum Complex is constructed around the actual built replica of a ship which traveled from Portugal to South Africa in 1987/8 to commemorate the 1488 trip of Bartolomeu Dias, supposedly the first European to set foot in South Africa, who then apparently returned back to his ship and sailed off again (see Leslie Witz’s current paper for more detail of this museum). The museum commemorates the accompanying 1988 festival (Witz 2006) and clearly is based on the coming of ‘civilisation’ and a maritime history to South Africa; with a diorama of Europeans first meeting locals, artefacts of social history and maritime memorabilia, and paintings and craftwork created for the accompanying festival. 

As part of the depiction of ‘maritime history’, there is a map of the ‘Spice Trade’ which ,interestingly, does not reveal that the Spice Trade route taken by the Dutch East India Company was also the route through which slaves were delivered, along with goods, to South Africa. Postal stones are also prevalent, as the Dias Museum is said to be the site of the first ‘Post Office’ of sorts in South Africa - post obviously relating to transport here. 

Likewise, the Maritime Museum in the Waterfront depicts the seemingly wondrous world of shipping, paintings of full-masted ships fronting the entrance to the previous Union Castle building at the Waterfront. An exhibition ‘The Union Castle line in the Twentieth Century’, covers working on and travelling on the Union Castle liners, including posters advertising holidays to be taken by the (white) elite. There is a panel on immigration to Cape Town, with people disembarking in a basket hoisted above the water into Cape Town harbor, yet there is no clear coverage of slavery or the fishing industry in the museum (interestingly, the Maritime Museum falls under Iziko, which also houses the Slave Lodge Museum - does this then indicate that the relative categories of classification of museums materially ‘divorce’ maritime history from slavery, despite Cape Town being a major port for the importation of slaves by the Dutch East India ships in the past? There are again, many old models of ships (the museum previously had a full-time model maker who stayed very busy, and ship companies previously had ship models that were given to the museum, and there are apparently a great deal of ship models in storage. There is what might be termed an ‘add on’ exhibition by Witz and Rassool – a small exhibition on a shipwreck – ‘The Last Voyage of the Mendi’ with video as well as text/photographic panels.

The Slave Lodge, in Cape Town, exists as the building constructed on the site of the original slave lodge in Cape Town . The exhibition ‘Remembering Slavery’ on the ground floor is a multimedia exhibition with thematic room installations, poetry and sound. The exhibition manager Fiona Clayton indicated that the story of slave transportation depicted by the exhibition is overall a more general story of slavery, rather than one specific to the experience of travel by Cape Town slaves, as shown by the inclusion of the archetypal picture of the specially-designed well-known ‘slave vessel’, although slaves along the Dutch East India Company route were transported not separately, but with other goods, as previously mentioned, themselves as goods. 

Looking more investigatively at the ‘act of looking’ and representation within the museum context, the image of what is described as a ‘typical slave ship’ brings to mind the Dias Museum image of a ship as contrast – displayed as an object in itself, of colonial celebration, travel and discovery, detached from the history of exploitation and slavery that followed it. An image of slaves being led in chains after capture can also be argued to show a different perspective on the broader story of maritime transportation to that of the Maritime museum or Dias Museum maps of goods transport and discovery. The map depicting ship routes where slaves were taken from to Cape Town on display in the Slave Lodge, can be compared to the map in the Dias Museum – two maps in different contexts of interpretation, but which are intrinsically related. 

A sense of the contribution of those people who arrived in the Cape is present in the display of artifacts (noticeably from the previous cultural history collection) which are used to show evidence of artistry and skills brought into the Cape by slaves and indentured labourers, as well as an installation of typical slave surnames that enable visitors to ascertain if they have possible slave ancestry.

g. Space, Separation and Resistance – Ghoema and Glitter, and the Apartheid Museum

A quick visit and consideration of the ‘Ghoema and Glitter’ exhibition of the Cape Town Minstrels Carnival at the Castle also highlights the fact that there may different takes on mobility – moving through the streets on foot is equally important and is a statement in itself of a form of resistance and conflict with authorities. In relation to themes of mobility and transport, not only is the carnival about dancing and parading, but it also traditionally brings those who were dispersed across Cape Town outer areas through forced removals back into the city centre, where the streets, again, are theirs. Furthermore, of further relevance, the participants hire a large number of Golden Arrow buses to move around the city during the Carnival and for the Carnival competitions. Carnival requires a different use of the city – it reshapes and destabilizes city norms of mobility and access during its presentation, destabilizing temporarily established city flows and presenting an alternative world of access and ownership within seeming anarchy but actually within a very well structured movement of large numbers of people across a city, to converge at key points and times in bursts of creativity and often well-rehearsed celebrations. 

The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, the final point of arrival, is a high-technology museum, rich in video and sound as well as text and installations, which by some have been problematically contextualized due to its investors being the Gold Reef City entertainment/casino complex where ‘In the larger framework of the Gold Reef City Complex as a whole… the Apartheid Museum is one of a range of attractions…. For those investing large money in the new entertainment business, reliving apartheid is another legitimate experience, an attraction, not quite a snuff movie, but in the same league.’ (Hall and Bombardella 2005). For others, it is a successful and powerful reminder of a recent past and its exhibition methods succeed in conveying a traumatic and exploitative past (Ranking and Schmidt 2009).

The museum, according to curator Emilia Potenza, depicts the more the overriding ‘grand narrative’ of apartheid, including the history of resistance, rather than the individualized and ‘community’ experience of the District Six Museum. (There are some memory boxes at the entrance, but the Apartheid museum focuses less on community and people stories overall, nothing like the scale of District Six museum.) 

Transport-wise, in relation to vehicles, the museum contains Mandela’s car (created for him after his release by transport workers) and, something one does not have in the James Hall Museum, a kaspir - an ominous feature of the apartheid past, which one can climb inside and use as a point of surveillance, to create a sense of understanding of apartheid surveillance and control. As previously mentioned, its strength is that it integrates architecture and design, claimed by some to act as a bodily destabilizing experience, mimicking experiences of control, oppression, surveillance, segregation and liberation in its efforts to convey the experience of apartheid in the past (Rankin and Schmidt 2009). 

Two of the most successful exhibits of the Apartheid Museum, according to the curator (Education and Exhibitions Consultant) Emilia Potenza in interview, are two exhibits where I would argue embodiment plays a major factor – the entrance that, as previously mentioned, divides the visitors into two categories through their entrance cards, and thus splits them into separate entrances and initial routes, and a room that represents those who died from hanging, convicted as a result of apartheid resistance – an installation of hangman’s ropes for every person who died. The effectiveness of the embodied experience of actually standing in the presence of an installation, or being made to move in certain ways, definitely needs to be taken note of.

6. MOVING TOWARDS PLURALITY: DISCUSSION AND CONSIDERATIONS – FLIGHTS OF FANCY?

Transport and mobility suggest an in-between state, a non-stasis in which artefact and movement become the event – a suspension between the ‘here’ and the ‘there’. If one were to move away from depicting merely the vehicles and modes of transport people use(d) and instead explore the thicker contextual world/s they moved – and in many cases, continue to move within - the establishment of networks, divisions, linkages and non-mobilities, unpacking the spaces in-between ‘here’ and ‘there’, maybe there is an opportunity to interrogate, even break down, some of the constructedness of divided identities and community in South Africa. 

Certainly, on an international scale, through exhibitions such as ‘America on the Move ‘ Smithsonian exhibition (Lubar 2004) and the London transport museum (Divall 2008) transport museums have been actively moving towards representing he social issues of transport and its construction, taking a broader interpretation than just vehicles alone and there is no reason why a new museum of mobility and transport in Cape Town should not do this. 

To do so, one needs to be particularly cognizant of issues of exclusion and privilege when faced with the apartheid past, the problematic social fabric that delineates, divides and differentiates persons even today in Cape town. Is there perhaps a way of incorporating all this in one museum – providing a museum space that ‘comes alive’ – as a discursive creative space that integrates and interconnect the past with present with the past, and doesn’t just leave it, to use an apt metaphor ‘standing’ but which itself has its own mobility, fluidity, flexibility, a forward-movement of thinking that through exploring the past, examines the present and creates not a linearity of experience, but a multiplicity?

Given that this paper has the indulgence of, effectively, fiction, in that the Cape Town Museum of Transport/Mobility as a solid constructed thematic material object is not defined as yet, albeit various interests and different collections/ potential archives currently emerging and available spaces, proposals, propositions and negotiations having taken place in Cape Town, like an unformed artwork, there is currently creative space for conjecture and suggestion – flights of fancy that may indeed – to continue the transport metaphor – one day become airborne?

Firstly, is there the possibility for multiplicities of interpretation of transport mobilities and histories in a museum context? Can transport be viewed, and even represented, as non-mobility rather than mobility in certain case, points of blockage as well as movement in Cape Town? As in Legassick and Rassool’s (2000) ‘bringing skeletons out of the cupboard’ in relation to South African museums collections, can one, or should one, reveal the more sinister side of transport in Cape Town, focusing on the underlying skeletal framework and not the façade – such as the Slave Trade, the spread of Empire and colonialisation through trains; migrant labour; the uprooting of people though forced removals; the establishment of highways and rail tracks as barriers and boundaries; the expansion of bus and taxi transport as people had to commute further and further to work ? Or does the focus on the technological aspects that enthusiasts (who, according to Divall (2008) are not the most numerous visitor numbers in transport museums) and the nostalgia and reification of the motor car and various models of transport antiquity? Does one focus on interactive exhibits, transport rides, then pensioner in uniform who delivers tickets to children without problematising the past, does one focus on (as Divall puts it) the BLO’s (Big Lumpy Objects) as key attractors, known to work well in UK transport museums, or AVC’s (Astounding Virtual Constructions – - my own terminological creation) instead? Or both? 

Technology and Science, and the social sciences are often perceived to be theoretically far apart, difficult to merge in theory (see Mitchell 1998). Yet, through focusing merely on one interpretation, we ignore multiple others, that create a narrative in Cape Town that potentially implicitly excludes, (as in collections of motor vehicles in relation to a population who do not and may not ever possess a vehicle of their own) - a constant reminder of what one does not have, or can motor vehicles maybe represent possibilities – desire and dreams and fantasies for what maybe for what one might have, one day – and, more important, would people want to come to the museum because of this? 

Interestingly there is a motor vehicle event that takes place at Good Hope Centre in Cape Town annually, in which panel beaters display and win prizes for converted vehicles which draws on an audience primarily from ‘coloured’ residential areas, and certainly involves creativity, uniqueness and artistry in relation to vehicles. Perhaps a museum of Transport could incorporate events or reference to activities such as these? What about the well-known bicycle and running competitions in Cape Town such as the Argus? Can artworks also be used, as the burnt out bus of Roger Meintjes, or artists brought in to create new works, who, as Schneider (2003; Schneider and Wright 2010; 2006) argues, research in a manner similar to anthropologists in society. Artists, as in District Six museum, could also be part of the museum's construction, presenting more imaginative, playful interactions with the public that seek to interpret and interrogate transport realities, not as add-on art exhibits to collections already present, or as decorative pieces, as often happens, but part of the planning and creative thinking around specific exhibitions, even created through workshops (see Gibson 2009).
Should there even be an archive (it seems there are currently several possibilities)? If so, what objects or texts should be included and who should have control and access over them? Certainly, as Hostel 33 shows, the ‘real thing’ has impact. But the high tech virtual environment can also have impact. Perhaps a concept where individuals can experience, say, an actual bus, - the ‘real thing’ - and move handles, knobs etc while taking a ‘virtual’ tour of Cape Town in the past and present could be exciting. What about interactive maps on walls that show changing routes and places over time, that give facts and access the past. As Lwandle has also shown, the real person has impact too, a storyteller who takes the person through the exhibits. Perhaps even a virtual person is possible – however, actors can also be used – a technique that was extremely effective when the Slave Lodge was renamed in 1998 on Heritage Day with a local company re-interpreting the past though a tour around the building with individuals portraying different slaves ‘coming to life’ as visitors entered each room (see Gibson 2009) .

One recent discussion with the Transport museum research core team suggested a museum could be a mode of transport itself, say a bus (or a train for that matter) that moves from site to site, a series of ‘nodal’ exhibitions in which the city becomes the archive and the vehicle becomes the site of mobility itself, moving between carefully constructed nodes of embodied experience and archival interpretation. Multiple routes thus form a new, multifocal museum. 

Perhaps a museum of this kind can bring together science and society; the fact that an object exists in-the-world provides a point for self reflection with regard to its praxis; its interaction with and creation of habitus and social spaces in relation to the structuring of society. Artworks, literature and film media have been examined in relation to imagined and collective identities that emerge in the city-scape, so why can’t a vehicle be explored in a similar way? Can a bus be taken, literally and metaphorically, apart, to its various technological, historical social constituents, and its passengers, its routes, its existence, its transport to Cape Town, its construction, what technology it involves, and what was presumed to be the advancement of society, its relationship with enthusiasts, as well as its re-interpretation as a theme by artists would be an exciting exhibition, or series of exhibitions. 

Can the museum be a mode of voice for transport – to improve conditions – bearing in mind there is also a need for a better and more accessible transport system in Cape Town (Pirie 2009) as in much of Africa? Could meetings be held, complaints and suggestions for improvement registered? 

The question as to who the audience are, as Divall (1999: 2001) has pointed out is crucial. How would you get people in the door, given there is not a history of museum visiting in less privileged groups, visitors often having to be ‘bussed in’. How would you move from a public that was historically excluded, to a mode of inclusion, for this is the first mode of exclusion for the museum exhibition impact on visitors – if they do not even come in the door in the first place? Museums have been described not only as dead in the past because of inert objects in glass ‘coffins’ but also in Cape Town would be ‘dead’ if people did not go through their doors, and for a truly dynamic museum, people access would be important. Maybe there could be free transport to the museum? Should the museum be free of charge? Would this require special events. And how much should or should the museum incorporate commercial involvement, would there be a form of showcase, like a science centre for transport, exhibitions on environmental issues and so on by companies (although Divall 2008 complains that in the London Transport Museum such approaches become didactic)? 

One way could be to ensure the public contributed in some way to the museum – as in the District Six museum where community contributions in the form of comments, memorabilia, voices, photographs and creations form part of the museum. One idea might be to have, say, a photography competition, with people taking photos on cellphones while travelling and the best selected for museum display, thus encouraging more visitors. Could there be a way of recording visitor comments and ideas on issues such as environment and transport; thoughts and ideas; maybe a discussion forum on a computer where the best threads and comments are displayed - can visitors leave ‘memories' of a photograph taken of them to be given away in return for their contributions to the archive, or to be displayed, and thus providing an opportunity to return and bring others? (The highly successful Hotel Yeoville in Yeoville library, Johannesburg recently established collaborative multi-platform public art project works along these lines).

A museum of this kind could become a vibrant space for integrating the city; people from all regions making up the community, even a huge interactive board where one can ‘access’ comments from people in different areas on what it is like and how it is to live there (with some possible monitoring in-between) is possible. What about large electronic screens set up in different stations/places where people could talk with each other, or images displayed from other parts of the city the same day, showing people moving perhaps through different stations, or streets, a sense of interwoveness and interconnection evoked despite divided realities and contexts, to create an awareness of the whole? (This is where visual artists and performers come in handy).Even if scaled down, say as a funded arts project with only a few key stations selected (which can change in location, or even a roaming camera person at stations with a sponsored monitor) it is possible. A wall of images of bus stops, stations, taxi ranks at different sites in Cape Town could also be very interesting and would depict the whole city on the go. 

To avoid ‘ethnographic fragmentation’ contemporary understandings of the museum would require perceptions of its archive as complex and multifaceted, challenging representations of dichotomous colonial and apartheid histories in relation to the present; to examine ‘how to think of the metaphorical associations between the material, emotional, social and symbolic, and experiential in a non-reductionist way and capture the liminality, fluidity and interactivity of categorization…. To rethink object interfaces on the basis of a range of multiple, mobile metaphors – material, solid and linguistic, to which various actors can contribute as a kind of transdisciplinary practice’ (Cameron and Mengler 2009:213-214). The museum should ideally be an intervention, providing multiple points of access and interpretation that leave the visitor questioning their own position and hstory in the world and to walk out the door looking differently at the city, wanting to know more. Is there a way, perhaps, of designing gaps, barriers that represent blockages also in transport history - of assigning routes that could not be taken, in a metaphorical or experiential manner, where the ways in which people live and interconnect can be reworked?

There is space also for oral histories but these will need to be carefully worked out – whose? How are they selected, who does the context of their telling shape their narrativisation (something that UWC MA student Charlene Houston is currently working on.) Are there alternative modes of collection?

All of the above needs careful thought and consideration, the weight of more in-depth historical research underpinning methods that could seem more playful and/or superficial takes on people’s lives even frivolous, but which, through their apparent simplicity, lead to deeper interrogation, more knowledge, a more thorough understanding. Ongoing historical research can work hand in hand with design elements to result in a plurality of experiences that are based on thorough research and thought. 

Could such a museum be based on efforts at connecting the city, reconnecting persons through examining the construction of spatialised dividing, exploring passenger as well as worker experiences? And can, or should, the museum be use to address issues like safe public transport at night and increased public transport safety. Can the museum become a space for debate, depending on who would visit? 
And what about risk? could there be an alternative ‘people’ room that creates exhibitions perhaps on enthusiasts who photograph, collect and make models of transport vehicles, those that creatively remake their cars, those who are in hiking groups? Could there be spaces that are open to constant reworking and reinvestigation, where exhibits might be allowed to ‘fail’ or schools can take in projects, in modes that operate similarity to the District Six Museum. Would the museum be a space for the public or workers or commercial companies? How can the ‘vampiric’ side of transport be displayed in a way that is beneficial and relevant to the present? Can the experience of migrant labour in the past be conceptually linked to immigration from other African countries as a means to counteract xenophobia? Should the authentic, the technological, the material, the ideological, the narrative, the social history predominate in such a museum and how can boundaries of classification, discipline and interpretation be crossed?

The spaces of what is missing and absent in some of the museums above – the absence of mobility and fluidity of persons themselves, convey the difficulty of representing and capturing movement. A new museum would need to effectively deal with the concept of flow and movement. 

7. CONCLUSIONS (OF A SORT)

The previous section has been one of creative indulgence, given the museum is as yet fictive and not fact. What perhaps most distinguishes the South Africa of the past are issues of control and access, not only to geographical space sand hence places of work and enterprise, but also people. If a museum can be created that looks at the concerns that fall between the absences and presences in museums I have explored thus far in my paper, in which the best of the museum exhibitions is incorporated into new exciting possibilities for rethinking museums, then, even if small-scale, there is opportunity for a creative approach that moves well beyond the Kunsthammer cabinet of curiosities; beyond the ‘dead mausoleum’ and the one-sided approach to the ethnographic fragment to integrate issues of technology, current concerns of environment, urban networks and soical trajectories, including an in-depth historical exploration of the growth and ‘non-growth’ (depending which way you look at it) of Cape Town’s road, public transport networks and interconnections. Such a museum could bring together different disciplines, art, science, design, computer technology ,transport companies, university research in really thinking beyond absences in transport/mobility museums. 

Can we then, put the people back , draw on the most recent research on cities that show cities are constructed not just from the urban infrastructure, but also the imaginaries, the desires, the multiple experiential emotions, narratives and negotiations people undertake, to explore the city and its networks in a way that African city specialist Simone (2004) describes the city as ‘the conjunction of seemingly endless possibilities of remaking. With its artifice of architectures, infrastructures, and sedimentation channeling movement, transaction and physical proximity, bodies are constantly are ‘on the line’ to affect and be affected, ‘delivered up’ to specific terrain and possibilities of recognition or coalescence…. Even in their supposedly depleted condition, all are openings onto somewhere, textures that punctuate and steer. They are the product of specific spatial practices and complex interactions of variously located actors that reflect maneuvers on the part of city residents to continuously resituate themselves in broader fields of action’ (9) Can such a museum extend to multiple lenses on the past, present and future, be plural, discursive and contradictory?

Returning to the theme of imagination and the museum as a created artwork (whether virtual, a building, a series of buildings, or a transport vehicle), it may operate on many levels to assimilate transport vehicle histories, social realities in the past and present, the city, conceptualisations of identity, and thus community, challenging community issues of belonging and ‘not-belonging’ by looking at the very networks that constructed these divides, in which transport and mobility as a theme becomes a tool for a space of artistic re-imagination, through juxtapositions, moments of unsettledness, that undo the divisions or ‘performance’ of separate communities through the materiality of conceptually divided displays which also enable individuals to understand how artificial divides were created, under narratives of progress, technologies and development? Because a museum of this sort should, ultimately not answer the question, whose perspective should this be from, but, ideally, should be from everyone’s perspective, and thus, conceptually, shape new perspectives. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A grateful thank you to the following for their time, assistance, interviews, inspiration…
Ali Hlongwane, Director, and Zola, Curator, Museum Africa, Johannesburg
Anne-Katrin Bicher, Workers Museum, Johannesburg
Chris Teale, South Africa Air Force Museum, Cape Town
Do Machin, Virginia and Ferdinand of HCI Foundation, Cape Town, as well as the HCI Foundation pensioners
Emilia Potenza, Curator, Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg 
Fiona Clayton, Slave Lodge, Manager, and Ghoema and Glitter Exhibition Curator, Cape Town
Lundi Mama, Education officer, Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, Lwandle, Western Cape
Mandy Sanger and Bonita Bennett, Director, District Six Museum, Cape Town
Mariki Victor, Director, Mayibuye Centre, Cape Town
Matthys Van der Merwe, Curator, Maritime Museum, Cape Town
Mbulelo Mrubata, Manager, Dias Museum Complex, Mossel Bay
Michael Wolf, Creative Director, and Marco Rosa, Business Development Manager, Formula D Interactive Design, Cape Town
Mokena Makeka, Director, Makeka Design Lab Architects, Cape Town
Karl Vol Schenck, Director/Manager, Outeniqua Transport Museum, George
Peter Hall, Head of Institution, James Hall Museum of Transport, Johannesburg
And thank you also to the UWC Transport Research Team – Professors Ciraj Rassool, Leslie Witz and Nicky Rousseau of the History Department and Heritage Disciplines, Professor Gordon Pirie of Cities in Transition (VLIR), Postdoctoral fellow Anis Daraghma, and Postgraduate researchers Charlene Houston, Asaniel, Dmitri and Heather for ongoing discussion and inspiration, and Professor Colin Divall of York University and York Transport Museum for his input. Also, thank you to Jane Smidt, Janine and Noorun-nisa for UWC administrative support. 

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